No doubt most Americans want to see a fair health
care system. But when President Obama admitted
in his address this week
that there are
"details"
to be worked out, cynical reverberations went
throughout the hall. Then, of course, when
Obama claimed illegal aliens would not be getting
health insurance, Congressman
Joe Wilson
(R-SC) yelled
"You lie!"—an
impropriety
for which he has since apologized, but used to gain
votes at home on his web site. Further, he got
headline attention on
NBC`s Today Show
on Friday, September 11th.

So the battle will go on, with as yet an undetermined
outcome.

But most important in this Wilson attack is its
inadvertent highlighting of what must happen if any of
the problems that America faces are to be addressed and
solved.

In its usual agitprop style, the
Washington Post,
forced to headline its September 11th article
Shout Draws Focus to Illegal-Immigrant Issue(by
Alec MacGillis),
sub-headed the piece
Coverage Question
Is Complex, Experts Say, but Less Ominous Than Reform
Foes Warn.

An example of what these "experts"
said:

"To
counter claims that universal health care would cover
illegal immigrants, Democrats and independent arbiters
have pointed to language in the House legislation that
says the federal subsidies, or `affordability credits,`
that would be the main avenue to expanding coverage
would not be available to illegal immigrants."

Maybe, although Mac Gillis`s article went on to admit
that

"This
language does not assuage the bill`s critics, who say
the proposals lack the verification tools needed to
assure that illegal immigrants do not gain coverage
either through federal credits or expanded Medicaid
eligibility for the poorest of the uninsured."

(By the way, I don`t notice Congress rushing to extend
E-Verify beyond its present expiration date of
September 30, 2009.
E-Verify, you recall, is the highly effective Federal
program which allows employers to determine quickly 99%
of the time if job applicants are here legally.)

Of course, we already subsidize illegal aliens. As
the Post
reports, "It is
estimated that there are 6 million to 7 million illegal
immigrants without health insurance and that several
million more have obtained coverage through employers or
on their own. Taxpayers already subsidize health care
for illegal immigrants — Medicaid reimburses hospitals
for emergency treatments for undocumented immigrants,
most notably for childbirth."

"Democratic and Republican leaders
all say
illegal immigrants shouldn`t receive government-funded
insurance in any new health legislation, just as they
are banned from receiving
Medicare
or
nonemergency Medicaid.
But in an exchange Thursday night clarifying the
president`s position in the aftermath of Mr. Wilson`s
outburst, White House aides said Mr. Obama`s health plan
would restrict illegal immigrants` access beyond what
congressional Democrats have proposed."

This huge and protracted fight over health care reform
leads us clearly to consider the larger, more troubling
point.

It really doesn`t matter what issue you bring up for a
broad public policy debate—continuing to bring in
sizable immigrant populations, legally or illegally,
puts reform of all urgent public policy issues under
extreme stress.

In aggregate, the increase of US population from 310
million today to 500 million by 2050—growth now almost
totally the result of immigrants since 1965 and their
offspring—will overwhelm all attempts at meaningful
improvement on every pressing issue.

Here`s a short list of the challenges we face, offered
by
Dr. John Tanton,
founder of FAIR:

Our aging infrastructure—should be rebuilt using
unemployed American labor, not imported aliens.

Perhaps the most major issue—assuring the solvency of
Medicare, Medicaid and the Social Security system, all
widely held to be imperiled.

As Tanton notes,
"all these issues have demographic/immigration
components", thus making
"immigration reform, both legal and illegal, the capstone issue".

Americans have long been preponderantly in favor of much
lower immigration. Perhaps now, facing these budgetary
constraints on every side, our elected elites will begin
to feel the pressure of their American voter
constituencies.